The population worldwide has gone bananas ‐ "ba-nah-nahs," as the Brits would say ‐ over The Donald. From the Thames to Timbuktu, it seems folks are either mad at the president of the United States or mad for him. On this "matter," very few straddle the fence. And as for the fence, itself ‐ the one proposed along the southern border of the United States ‐ it, too, is hardly a neutral subject.
Let's just say that rarely could the reaction to either Donald Trump's persona or his proposals be characterized as nonchalant. Regardless of how apolitical his armchair critics may profess to be, or how remote from America's unique political system they reside, all creatures great and small appear to have an opinion about the current occupant of the White House.
It is irrelevant how I happened to be the lone Yank on a British cruise ship during a fortnight that ironically included the Fourth of July. In spite of my apparent telltale American accent ‐ or perhaps because of it ‐ I was generally chatted up as a sort of floating curiosity.
Before the voyage, I had harbored the faux hope that I wouldn't be spotted as a colonist, at least not immediately. Yet as soon as I opened my mouth, I was repeatedly asked what part of America I came from and what I thought of Donald Trump.
Keep in mind that the British press is as liberal as our own. On the day I flew home from Southampton, London's Sunday newspapers were bristling with criticism concerning President Trump's "defense of Western civilization speech" in Poland. Commentators huffed that he had cast a pall over the G-20 conference by failing to fall in lockstep with other world leaders. One editorial writer opined that Trump's "sacking" of the FBI chief was further proof of the dictatorship America had suddenly ‐ shockingly ‐ become.
But as is the case here at home, it became quickly apparent to me that the citizens of the United Kingdom are very much divided over the direction in which their own country is going. Still, several of those I talked with seemed visibly surprised by my defense of our sitting president. After all, educated women were assumed to have constituted the bulk of Hillary's support.